Assessing the Climate-Smartness of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP): What can we learn from Benin, Guinea, Niger, Togo and Chad projects?

Agriculture is the most important sector of the national economies in West Africa. However, the agricultural sector is faced with numerous challenges (declining soil fertility and land degradation, adverse climate change manifestations, demographic pressure, market instability and incidence of crop pests and diseases, etc.), compromising its ability to be a driving engine out of food insecurity and poverty. With the growing challenge of climate change and variability in West Africa, the agricultural production and food systems must undergo significant transformations to meet the interlinked challenges of achieving sustainability, increasing food security and responding to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is proposed as a solution to transform and reorient agricultural systems to support food security under the new realities of climate change.